‘New Democrat’ Watch #8: Clinton Bungee-Jumping On Nuclear Testing Endangers National Security

(Washington, D.C.): President Clinton used the 2 July edition of his weekly radio address to the nation to announce new unilateral and multilateral initiatives aimed at curbing nuclear testing. The President’s own words reveal the giant leap of faith involved in rejecting the advice of those in the Pentagon (both civilian and uniformed military) and Department of Energy directly responsible for certifying the safety, reliability and effectiveness of the U.S. nuclear deterrent. Indeed, it might even be described as bungee-jumping with the national security — without having checked the length or strength of the cord.

‘Safe’ Now, Sorry Later?

In announcing that he would forego underground testing for fifteen months, the President stated that his Administration had determined that "the nuclear weapons in the United States’ arsenal are safe and reliable." He went on to pledge that, in order to ensure that the U.S. deterrent remains unquestioned, the nation will explore "other means of maintaining our confidence in the safety, the reliability and the performance of our weapons."

The good news is that the President acknowledges the need to ensure the safety and reliability of America’s nuclear weaponry. The bad news is that he is able reasonably to assert that the U.S. stockpile of such weapons is both safe and reliable today largely as a function of one thing: the nation’s past ability to use a modest but regular series of safe, underground nuclear tests to establish that U.S. weapons work when and how they are supposed to — and will not when they are not supposed to.

No Real Alternative to Testing

The leap of faith comes in where he asserts that the United States will give up such testing at least through September 1994 — and, if other nations agree, permanently — and "explore" other ways to maintain confidence that the country’s nuclear arsenal continues to meet this stringent standard. In fact, there are no other options that can provide the certainty the nation needs in this area.

To be sure, computer simulations, modeling, non-explosive tests, etc. will all continue to play a part in monitoring the stockpile and determining when corrective action is required. Absent the unique opportunity an actual underground nuclear test provides, however, to validate diagnoses of the problems that inevitably arise with aging weapon systems — and the myriad ways in which changes made to one part of such complex mechanisms affect the rest of the design — there is, as a practical matter, no way to "maintain high confidence in the safety, the reliability and the performance" of the U.S. nuclear arsenal." In addition, the inability to conduct such tests will preclude realistic weapons-effects experiments that ascertain the safety, reliability and effectiveness of even non-nuclear military systems that might have to operate in nuclear environment.

What Benefit for ‘U.S. Non-Proliferation Goals’?

Even more of a dangerous bungee-jump is the notion that, by exercising restraint in the United States’ nuclear test program, the United States will measurably affect the proliferation of nuclear technology and arms. While demands for a Comprehensive Test Ban (CTB) have been a hardy perennial of Third World nations and arms control advocates for decades, the truth is that would-be proliferators like North Korea’s Kim Il Sung and Iraq’s Saddam Hussein decide to proceed with nuclear programs for their own strategic reasons — not because the U.S. conducts tests or refrains from testing.

If anything, it is likely that American restraint on testing will actually have an undesirable effect on two nations whose nuclear programs are of particular concern to President Clinton. Ironically, the day before Mr. Clinton announced his initiative on nuclear testing, he used dramatic language to describe his concerns about nuclear programs in North Korea and Japan. He said "[the Korean peninsula] is the scariest place on earth" and a North Korean bomb is "our biggest nightmare" and that ["It would be] a very serious thing" if Japan decided to acquire nuclear weapons. It is a safe bet that perceived U.S. fecklessness with regard to its own arsenal will embolden Pyongyang to press forward with North Korea’s covert effort to acquire nuclear weapon capabilities. For its part, Japan may conclude that it can no longer rely on the United States’ nuclear umbrella and that the time has come to acquire its own deterrent.

What is more, it has been proven by Pakistan and South Africa that a nation can develop nuclear weapons without nuclear testing. In other words, nations whose perceived nuclear needs can be satisfied with relatively crude devices could — and likely would — proceed with their weapons programs while complying with a future Comprehensive Test Ban. This reality is being even further exacerbated by a new option available to such nations: simply buying tested nuclear weapons from others instead of having to go to the trouble and expense of developing them indigenously.

The Next Shoe To Drop: U.S. De-Nuclearization

Taken to its logical conclusion, the argument of testing’s opponents that the United States must stop nuclear tests so as to "de-glamorize" and otherwise devalue thermonuclear weaponry would require the U.S. to abandon nuclear deterrence altogether. In fact, this was one reason a CTB featured prominently in the Nuclear Freeze campaign.

Now that President Clinton has embraced the anti-nuclear movement’s test-ban agenda, he should not be surprised to find insistent new demands placed upon him to take other, even more radical disarmament steps anathema to bona fide "New Democrats." As it is, the combined effect of the Administration’s stance on nuclear testing, the absence of production of any nuclear weapons and the special nuclear materials they require and the ongoing dismantling of the industrial and technological infrastructure associated with these activities will seriously degrade the American deterrent.

This reality adds to the risks associated with President Clinton’s nuclear testing bridge-leap insofar as he makes the dangerous assumption that he will be able to "direct the Department of Energy to prepare to conduct additional tests while seeking approval to do so from Congress" in the event another nation conducts a nuclear test before the end of September 1994. The human talents and diagnostic skills necessary to prepare and conduct such tests are no more immutable to change over time than are the weapons themselves.

Faced with a lengthy — if not permanent — prohibition on their professional activities, the best scientists and technicians are leaving the Energy Department and its three nuclear weapons laboratories. As a result, the United States may soon be denied the option of swiftly resuming safe underground tests.

The Bottom Line

In short, President Clinton is willfully subordinating established national security requirements to wishful thinking about arms control and illusory work-arounds if either his approach or America’s nuclear weapons prove defective. The contrast could hardly be more stark with the responsible view taken by another of his predecessors, Ronald Reagan, who told Congress in September 1988: "As long as we must depend on nuclear weapons for our fundamental security, nuclear testing will be necessary."

Now, thanks to Bill Clinton’s bungee-jump, thoughtful Americans and sensible U.S. officials are being reduced to hoping that some other nation decides quickly to conduct a weapons test — and thereby affords them a chance to place U.S. nuclear policies and programs on a sounder footing.

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1. "New Democrat" Watch is a series of Decision Briefs designed to illuminate important security policy decisions pending before the Clinton Administration. These decisions will do much to determine the compatibility of Clinton policies with the U.S. national interest. They will also provide objective measures of the President’s follow-through on his commitment to abandon the left-wing, "Old Democrat" behavior that has afflicted and undermined his presidency thus far.